Prometheus

A Silmarillion oneshot

By

EvilFuzzy9

Rating: K

Genre: Family/Hurt/Comfort

Characters/Pairings: Fëanor, Olórin; [N/A]

Summary: Fëanáro was not the only one of his race to have been parted from one dear, one who should have been there beside him, but he was the only one to have experienced such a loss amid the bliss of these Undying Lands.

Finwë's son wandered the streets of Tirion, a darkness blanketing his mind. He looked upon the households of his people, of the Noldor who dwelt within the Calacirya, homes bright with the gladness of their residents. Theirs was a bliss of youthful domesticity unmarred by fear or loss. A pang of bitter envy struck him, thrust a little deeper by every smiling face.

Alone of his generation, of those of the Eldalië born in Aman, did Curufinwë know the bite of parting. Not alone of all the Eldar. Those of the first generations, the firstborn of the firstborn who had seen the stars shining on Cuiviénen, had known the shadows of fear, and they had lost many dear to them in the darkness before the coming of Oromë, and in coming hither also had parted ways—forever, as it seemed—with many of their kin. But these had found joy in Aman, a relief for their sorrow.

Curufinwë Fëanáro was not the only one of his race to have been parted from one dear, one who should have been there beside him, but he was the only one to have experienced such a loss amid the bliss of these Undying Lands. For all others Valinor was a country where sorrow was forgotten and fear left behind, uncertainty and dread dismissed by the light and instruction of the Valar. Not so for Curufinwë. All the good of Valinor, of Aman, seemed tainted to him, touched by the grief of his mother's departure.

To others, the gardens of Irmo were a place of rest and renewal. For Curufinwë, when the ways of his feet carried him thither, when he found himself among the trees and fountains of Lórien, nigh to the empty yet unperishing body of his mother, Míriel, he felt only a deepening of his weariness. That air, fresh and light and soothing to all others, was for him thick and burdensome, weighing down his head and darkening his mood. That was the domain of the lord and lady of dreams and sleep, whence came all rest and refreshment for the children of the world.

But the dreams of Curufinwë were grim. Marred was the perfection of Aman, and he glimpsed the faults within it as no others seemed to. Valinor was not beyond grief. It was not beyond death and weariness. The bearing forth of his life wore away all his mother's gladness in being, until she wished to cease and depart from the circles of the world. This was a grievous thing to Finwë, and to all his people, but most deeply did it wound the heart of Fëanáro.

He wandered among shining lamps, crystals set upon slender poles that caught and cast about the streaming lights of Laurelin and Telperion. He looked down at his hands, the flesh ruddy with his life's burning flame, the very heat and vitality that had so consumed his mother. He clenched his fingers and felt a quiver in his body, a swell of unhappy emotion.

Why has my mother departed?

He had asked this question many times. Even for one of his kind and race, the mind of Fëanáro grew quickly. Though he was still very young, he could think deeply and shrewdly on many matters. His cleverness outgrew his wisdom, perhaps. The powers of his mind were too advanced for one who had lived so little a time, and the bleak ruminations of grief were swifter and deeper because of this. It was a river fierce beyond his skill to swim, and if he waded in carelessly he would be swept away and dragged into dark and swirling depths.

His mother had gone to the halls of waiting, to Mandos where he could not follow. He could not see her nor speak with her. She was beyond his voice and beyond his touch. It was a strange and sorrowful thing, singular in the tale of his people since their departure from the Middle-earth, the wide and wild lands he knew only from the stories of his elders. At first, all the Noldor had grieved for the lady's passing, for she had been the wife of their king, and much beloved on her own account. They had mourned with Finwë, and with Curufinwë.

But time seemed to erase their sadness. They moved on, forgetting the grief of Míriel's passing as something that wasn't theirs, seeming no longer to care for the loss of that beautiful visage and those skillful hands, that fair and proud existence. It stung Fëanáro to see this, most especially when he saw even his own father seemingly start to forget.

The Valar spoke heavy dooms concerning the nature of the Children and the case of Míriel, Indis, and Finwë. Fëanáro was clever, yet much of their reasoning exceeded his present grasp—or was it that, for all his cunning, he was wrapped up in the sorrow of his loss and unwilling to accept that his father had found a new love? It was strange to be certain, and it did not seem right or natural to Fëanáro. He mistrusted the new wife of Finwë, doubting her faithfulness and resenting how she had come among them.

He tried to heal. He tried to move on from the passing of his mother. But it was hard. Was it not the conceiving and begetting of his own substantial life which had so worn and drained Míriel Therindë? Because he was born, because his parents conceived him, had he not lost his mother and been left confused and aggrieved?

How could that be? Whence came hurt and suffering, if not from evil? How could it pass that a deed called good and worthy, like the bearing of a child, could lead to such a pain and parting? So long as this world should last, his mother was constrained to remain in Mandos, constrained by the choice she had made for herself.

It was a bitter thing. The more Fëanáro considered it, the more wretched it all seemed. His elders had come here to escape the grief and fears of Middle-earth, to dwell in blissful safety under the eye and instruction of the Powers. For the promise of deliverance from the confusion and the memory of shadow behind them, they journeyed hither, parting in stages again and again from their own people, their own lands. Here they had been brought by the Valar, by Oromë and by Ulmo and by Manwë their king, with the promise of safety and peace and joy.

Yet the shadow of death was among them. The chance of grief was still there. They were not free from sorrow in this country. If it could happen to the very king and queen of the Noldor, the most skillful and learned of the Elven kindreds, then could it not happen to anyone? Valinor, to Fëanáro, did not seem so safe as his elders had said was promised. Valinor was all he had ever known. Here he had lived all his life in the most blissful and pure of lands, as they called it, under the guard and the guidance of the Valar. And here had he known all the grief and mischance of his short, troubled life.

His mother was gone. His father, it seemed, forgot her, and the Valar permitted it, allowing Finwë to take a second wife. Fëanáro liked this not at all. It displeased him. It troubled him.

It was not right.

The Valar, he deemed within his heart, had erred. He had hoped and prayed that they would reject his father's petition, that Finwë would be rebuked and returned to the path of wisdom. It had not been so. They permitted him to commit this perversion, allowed him to buy the chance of a second marriage with the price that his first wife should remain forever in Mandos, never again to go among the living.

Never again to speak with her son.

Fëanáro despised this. It was wrong. It was wrong.

Whence came this, all of it? Why did it happen? Was it he? Was it that he lived and was, that his very beginning was a mistake, that in being given life he took all that his mother had?

What was he, then?

Pain and suffering, fear and grief, these were things of evil, of the shadows of Arda marred. The sorrow of his family, the sundering of husband and wife, parent and child—it had to have a cause. It was inconceivable that this should be chance alone, cruel happenstance undirected. Was there then a purpose to it, a reason for this to be so?

They said that all things rebounded to the glory of Ilúvatar. How, though, could the sorry chances of Fëanáro Curufinwë fit into this theory? To him it seemed impossible.

There was no purpose. No point.

If pain came of evil... then what of the pain he felt? That pain came from his mother's passing. And why did his mother pass? Because her life was spent in giving life to him, burned out until she had not the strength to endure being any longer. Because he was born, his mother now was bound to stay in Mandos forever.

As Fëanáro understood it, she was dead.

Because of him.

His grief came of himself. The loss he knew came because he began and was within the world as a living soul. It was his fault, whether or not he'd chosen to exist. But it wasn't his choice to be. It wasn't his choice to live.

It was an irrational thought. He walked to the outskirts of Tirion, deep in a black and miserable thought. Until now he had clung to the hope of his mother's return, had held out faith that once she was rested she would be with them again, and their family could be whole and happy. The pronouncement of the Valar dashed that hope utterly. His father was to be remarried, and his mother was to stay forever in Mandos.

Forever.

Fëanáro had wits enough to grasp the concept. Until all was ended, Míriel Therindë would remain beyond him, beyond all who lived. Until the world was complete, and the life of the Eldar was finally spent, he would never again see his mother. And maybe, if the ending of the world would mean the ending of the Eldar, he would never see her again.

Never, unless perhaps he should die also, and his soul be sped to the Halls of Mandos. It was a black thought, cold and bitter, and it caught in his throat. It stuck in his mind.

He could not dismiss this notion. He could not make it as though these thoughts had never been. Once conceived it remained with him forever, even as the souls of the Eldalië remained within Eä forever.

Fëanáro had come now to the brink. He gazed down the side of Túna, the hill on which was founded fair elven Tirion. He stood above a steep drop, and below him saw a great stone. He stepped forward, cold in his heart with the endless cycle of this gnawing thought, fey with despair, and he made to cast himself down to the stones.

He cried aloud, for all his intent the last words that he would ever speak alive.

"Why am I Fëanáro? Am I solely here to consume and destroy as flame unchecked? Yea, if this be so, and if there be justice in Arda Marred, then pray, whoever may hear my voice: snuff this accursed spirit of fire, and let it trouble no more in the woes of Eä! I will burn no others!"

He then cast himself forward with bitter tears in his eyes, kicking from the hillside to spring down headfirst. But a hand caught his shoulder, and he was pulled from the brink ere he could plummet.

"Nay! Do not curse the life you are given, child of the stars. It was not gained by your choice, and it is not yours to surrender."

A firm grip, yet gentle, turned Fëanáro. A face grave with pity met his hot and stinging eyes. Silver was the hair on its head, and deep with wisdom were its eyes. Ageless and fair, almost kingly it was, as one of the great among the Maiar. Bushy brows bristled above gleaming eyes, lending a strength and sagacity to the visage.

It was a face he knew not, and Fëanáro had thought himself acquainted with most those in Tirion. But though the sound of that voice shook him from the blackness, it could not wholly dispel his misery. His face burned with shame, as one caught in the midst of some furtive deed. He responded sullenly, and he jerked himself from the figure's grasp.

"Yet I want it not, if it comes at this price," he responded darkly, guessing that the figure knew much already of his mood and thought. "But who are you, lord, to spy on the son of King Finwë?"

"And who are you, son of the king, not to share in your father's gladness?" replied the figure.

Fëanáro bristled.

"What gladness? He forgets his wife to marry another. Is that the nature of Eldalië? Am I to praise this foolishness when it robs me and my mother forever? Myself of her, and her of life?"

"Yet your mother chose," said the figure. "She was given the choice to make, and she made it for herself."

"But she needn't have done, were my father faithful," said Fëanáro sullenly. "I am certain she would have chosen otherwise, in time."

"Perhaps she would have," said the stranger. "I do not say what Finwë did is just. Nor do I say so for Míriel. But they have each made their choice, and it cannot now be unmade. The doom is set. It must be endured."

Fëanáro seethed at these platitudes, fair though a part of him deemed them. He turned his eyes from that wise and shining face, feeling a twinge of uncertainty in the conviction of his grief. But he would not be turned easily from the course of his own will, and he was loth to be instructed like a simple and wayward child.

"Then it is bitter," he said, looking into the starry skies over Arda. "That death should come here, where we were told all would be well and safe. Why? From what evil does this proceed? Is it not because I was..."

He trailed off, then, abashed. He could not bring himself to speak the darkest thoughts of his heart. He did not wish for pity from anyone, be they Eldar or Maia.

"Is it death that has befallen your mother?" said the stranger thoughtfully. "I wonder. Perhaps for the Eldar it is death, yet she still is, and she yet abides within the circles of the world, whether or not she be constrained to a small and lonely dwelling beyond the reach of those with body."

"If that is not death, for one such as we, then what else can death be? We do not cease as plants or lowly beasts, though they be dear and beloved. But the word for the death of a tree or a hound is the same as we use for the death of an Elf."

"The word is the same," said the stranger. "This does not make the things themselves the same."

"But she died, as we call it," said Fëanáro. "Do you deny this? Perhaps it is that her body remains, whole and ready to join once again, yet the fëa has departed and will not return. Is not the sundering of these halves a death, as we might call it? Is it not an evil thing, and a grief against our right nature, to be so disembodied, howsoever it may come to be?"

"It is," said the stranger. "Indeed, we may say that Míriel has died. The tongues of the Quendi do not distinguish between this death and that. Not yet. But there is a distinction."

"Shall we then make new words for the kinds of death, dwelling morbidly on what should not be at all so that we might satisfy all the little differences as you see them, lord?"

Despite the cold tone of his words, Fëanáro could not conceal a hint of interest as he spoke. It was in the nature of the Noldor that they ever delighted in the making of words, and the gaining of knowledge, and the devising of new and more subtle crafts. Fëanáro exemplified all the qualities of his people, both the good and the ill. He was, in some remote part of himself, eager to do this.

"I do not believe the tongue will change in such a way while there are still other words to make and other expressions to devise," said the stranger. "Only when the Noldor have exhausted all other matters will they turn to the sorting and naming of deaths. It is not a matter of any great importance. A purely scholastic consideration, so long as they dwell here in Valinor."

"Is that so?" said Fëanáro. "Yet Valinor is not beyond death. Not if Therindë could be taken as she was. There is the chance, even here. We are nowhere safe."

"That is an unhappy thought, Finweminya. You speak lightly, though your words are dark. But I think these are matters beyond even your prodigious grasp, little one."

"I am not a child," said Fëanáro. "I have equaled those who are of full stature in body, where it concerns the measure of thought and cunning."

"Yet you have not lived long enough to gain all wisdom," said the stranger. His tone was more grave, now, and it carried a trace of gentle rebuke. "Nor will you, unless Arda should be forever, and no evil chance or weariness ever come upon you."

"I see. I am unwise, then," said Fëanáro. "Does this mean that the feeling of my heart is without meaning? That I should hold my tongue and suffer in silence so as not to trouble the happy thoughts of my peers? Am I to be forever a blemish on the life and gladness of others?!"

His voice rose as he spoke, and his frustration overmastered him. He spoke hotly, the fire within him leaping up, and lachend he looked at the stranger, piercing him with a glance brighter and keener than that of any other among the Children. His face was flush with immoderate anger, the beauty of his complexion marred by a redness of wrath, and he clenched his fists until his knuckles blanched.

The stranger looked at him calmly, unfazed by the eruption of Fëanáro's words. His eyes were soft and pitying, though his face was elsewise close and unreadable. He slowly clasped his hands.

"I forgive you," said the stranger. "You do not ask it yet, but when your mood has cooled you will regret those words, and you will fret to have said them. So I forgive you. Do I not see that you are hurt deeply by these events? Others also grieve, but for none, I suppose, has it cut as near or as deeply as it has for you and your father. And your father has other partings and other losses in his memory to blunt the bite of care, whereas you are young and tender of heart."

Fëanáro scowled, frustrated that this person brushed aside all his anger. The kindly words galled him, stinging as alcohol on a wound, and knowing that it was for his own good did not make it hurt any less.

"She's gone," he said tensely, his voice cracking, unable to draw forth any other cunning of speech to express his inexpressible grief. "She's never coming back. Why should I have to accept this? I don't want to accept it."

His shoulders heaved. Fëanáro stared at his feet, and he brought a sleeve to his eyes. The fine, light silk was darkened by moisture, and when he looked back up at the stranger his eyes were ruddy.

He sniffed.

"It is unfortunate that it must be so," said the stranger. "I pity you, child of Finwë. Your life has been marked from its very beginning by strange and singular events. Your house and your people stand apart from the rest of the Eldalië. Maybe it is that this shall be a thing for good, in some time yet to come. Maybe it will not. You are the son of Finwë, however, and you are mightiest of all your peers. I think you might come to do great things, if you choose."

"What is greatness?" said Fëanáro. "I am cunning, and I am fair, and I am more skillful and swiftly grown than any other of my age. Is that what it means to be great? Can greatness change the fortunes of the house of Finwë? Can it bring back my mother and make these sorrows so that they have never been? Yet even the Valar cannot do such a thing, if what they have taught us is true."

"It is true," said the stranger. "True for all who dwell in Eä. Perhaps not so for the One who waits without, but I do not believe He will amend the works of the Powers or the deeds of the Children. Not until some final end beyond even the sight of the lord of Mandos. Until then, all we can do is work to mend those evils that crop up in our time."

"Mend them, you say..." murmured Fëanáro. "But I see no way to mend this. Whence comes the evil of my birth and my mother's passing? Was it ill for Finwë and Therindë to seek to bring a child into this world? Should they not have done this thing? Should I never have been born? Am I, in myself, a thing of evil?"

"You are not evil," said the stranger. "But you will give evil council, if you allow such thoughts to rule all the courses of your reason. Do not be poisoned by grief, Fëanáro."

"Have I any choice in that, truly?" Fëanáro retorted. "Can the flame, water doused, bear fault when it gutters and dies? Can the water, filled with ash and soot, be blamed when it becomes ill to drink? I am but a vessel for my life's experience. If I am marred, did I ever have the power to resist it? I do not want to grieve, and I do not want to hurt, and I do not want to rage and curse the life I am given. Yet I do! I cannot stop it."

"You do not want to stop it," the stranger rebuked him. "Nor are you simply a canvas to be stained by all that touches you. You have colors of your own, Fëanáro: a soul and a will direct from Ilúvatar. These cannot be washed out or dyed over. If you bend to your worse nature, then it is because you have allowed yourself to succumb, and not because it was beyond the measure of your strength to resist. Such is the wisdom of the Maiar, as we have it. Nothing is evil in its beginning, and nothing is evil that cannot have chosen otherwise. You are not evil. Your birth was not evil."

"Then why do we suffer?" asked Fëanáro. "Even in Valinor, in the realm of the Deathless, death comes upon us as a shadow from the darkness of Middle-earth. But whence does it come? What was the cause of evil and fear, in the first place? Is this part of Ilúvatar's plan? Are we meant to be wearied and broken to amuse some dispassionate onlooker?"

"You speak evilly," said the stranger, and his expression was briefly dismayed. "Whence come these words, young one?"

"From pain. From my heart. They are my own words and my own thoughts, be they good or ill," said Fëanáro. "Maybe these words are evil, yet they are mine alone and come from no other."

"I see... Indeed, those evil words are your own," said the stranger. "But you are not, yourself, evil."

"Aren't I?" said Fëanáro mistrustfully. "Though I speak even against the One?"

"Foolishness is not an evil, by itself," said the stranger. "The evil is to wallow in folly and never correct it: to be governed by it forever, even though you be instructed in wisdom. If you speak foolishly now, then you can yet learn better and gain an understanding that is deeper than what you might have had if you never erred at all."

Fëanáro frowned, and he looked long and thoughtfully at the stranger, this unknown Maia with whom he spoke. His brow furrowed with a deep introspection, and he sifted the words of their conversation in his mind, perceiving something meaningful that had passed between them. He was shrewd when sober, and when his mind was clear the powers of his reasoning were such as no other of his race could equal, even though he was still young and still growing.

But that selfsame youth, and a hot mood of his nature, left him frequently clouded, his judgement made crooked by the writhing pulsations of a passionate heart. Yet now his mood was cooling, the fires of anger spent in shouting. He was weary of wrath, weary of grief. He was exhausted: an empty vessel now willing to accept some small measure of wisdom.

He looked at Olórin and knew who he was.

Fëanáro did not smile. He had neither the strength nor the spirit for that. But there was some small lightening in the gloom of his mind. It felt as though a new understanding had come to him. His eyes seemed dark, the glinting steel of his thought directed inward.

He thought long about what had been said.

"What can I learn from this?" he wondered aloud. "I cannot see a lesson to be gained. Do you know, lord?"

"I could tell you what I think you should learn," said Olórin. "But what would it mean, then? You have been taught all the matters of virtue that you need to judge rightly and fairly. Return to those lessons, if you seek wisdom. You are not without your own powers of reason."

"Yet I am but a Child," said Fëanáro. "I might find myself mistaken, and stray. What is the path I should take? How can I heal? What must I do, and learn?"

"You have the instruction of your people, and of the Valar who instructed the Eldar," said Olórin. "And you have your own powers of thought to study those lessons and reason from them. If you stray, then accept the correction of those who love you."

"But what if their correction is, itself, in error? Or what if they stray alongside me?"

"Then remember the light of Valinor, and the faces of the Valar who were born from the mind of Eru Ilúvatar," said Olórin. "There is a true good, absolute, and there is a wisdom without folly. So long as you remember this, then however you might stray, there shall yet always be a chance to return hither."

"Your words are portentous," said Fëanáro. "But they give me relief. Thank you, lord."

"You are welcome, young prince," said Olórin with a bow of his head. "Whatever may come after, I hope you do not forget our talk."

"Whatever may come after..." said Fëanáro softly. "Maybe nothing else will. Maybe this will prove the last grief of the Elves, the last touch of the finger of darkness to mar our bliss."

"Would you, then, call it bliss?"

Fëanáro paused. He faltered.

"For myself? No," he said truthfully. "The pain is too near. I cannot say that, not yet, but others are glad. For the others, it is surely bliss. I would not wish to see it spoiled, though I am still sad."

"I do not think you will be sad forever," said Olórin. "It will never leave you, I deem, but new gladness will come, and new light. And maybe it is that you know these sorrows now so that you might become something more. The two trees were made only after the loss of the lamps and the changing of the lands. Sometimes sorrow can lead to a greater beauty, and to richer works."

"Maybe," said Fëanáro, turning from the stars to behold the mingling of the lights of the Laurelin and Telperion. "Maybe sometimes... maybe it will be so, this time."

His eyes were alight, and his face was hopeful despite the lingering stains of sadness.

Olórin rested a hand on Fëanáro's shoulder.

"Go to your father," he said. "He is to be wedded anew. I do not think Indis the Fair will ever replace your mother Míriel, in your heart, but do not scorn her for loving your father. It may be that in this, too, something new and fair will come to be that would not have been otherwise."

"Maybe it will be so," sighed Fëanáro.

He stepped forward and began up the path, heading back to elven Tirion. Only briefly did he look back, a final thought coming upon him half-formed.

He saw that the form of the kindly stranger, of Olórin the Maia, had disappeared.

He did not linger, or wonder long at this. Tirion was calling to him. He could hear the poetry of the Vanyar, strange and beautiful, drifting through the air. He heard the ringing of Noldorin hammers and chisels, like the tinkling of silver chimes, as his people labored in joyous craft.

In that moment, looking back and beholding the glittering black sky over Belegaer, and over Middle-earth far distant, Fëanáro felt something like foreboding. But a longing was also kindled within him, secret and wistful, to gaze upon the lands whence his people came in their beginning, to see the shores of the Bay of Balar, the wide forests of Endor, the towering and mist-shrouded Hithaeglir, and the dark clear waters of Cuiviénen under starlight. It was a keen longing, yet in his heart he felt that it should never come to be.

He turned back to Tirion, and he saw how narrow seemed the Calacirya, a small cleft in the high, forbidding walls of the Pelóri. He thought how unfortunate it was that the light of the Trees should be thus confined, or that those who yet dwelled in Middle-earth should be forgotten, deprived of the light and the teaching of Valinor. Perhaps one day the Eldar would return to Middle-earth, where they might seek out and instruct their forgotten and backwards kin.

If they turned aside from the path in fear, should they then be permitted no more chance or means to come hither? It was a strange thing, and sad. Maybe one day he would go with some of his people to teach those who lingered still under starlight.

The lands across the sea looked very wide, indeed.

Maybe one day...

But Fëanáro turned his course once more to Tirion, and he set aside all these thoughts.

One day, maybe.

But not today.

Not yet.

A/N: Fëanor is one of my favorite characters in Tolkien's legendarium. He isn't even the type of character I'm usually the most drawn to, but he is still really fun. In the sense that he makes the story far more interesting. In the sense that he instigates, escalates, or propagates nearly half of the major conflicts in the Silmarillion. So, a great character, but kind of an awful person. XD

That said, it's not like he doesn't have a reason to be so messed up.

Updated: 2-24-17

TTFN and R&R!

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